I Peter 2:9-10 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Christian Carnival (some number) :)

Welcome to the Christian carnival for this week.It's been a horrid week around here so if I missed anything well...sorry, just let me know and I'll add it. Doing this with a headache, extreme tiredness, on a day of a funeral and a sick hubby beside me. :) Life fun! NOT! (at least this week). God does sustain us. In no particular order I've listed all the submissions. I have to admit to being too tired this week to read through ALL the MANY submissions. My apologies...

It’s difficult sometimes to find just how a scripture applies to me and not to all the other people I’d like it to apply for. That underlines the importance of prayerful study of scripture. Prayerful study does not merely involved praying before you study. It is also the prayerful attitude, i.e. the attitude of listening to and depending on God throughout.

The Indian Ocean earthquake started off a very troubled year including terrorist attacks, train derailments, and a record number of hurricanes, Katrina among them, plus more local issues. And we, as Americans and especially the American church, had to respond.

After a while I became emotionally numb. I simply couldn't care anymore. I had no more sympathy to give.

Thinking of how I have cared for my own children, I began to think of how Christ has and continues to care for us. I thought of my own areas of sickness that have come in the form of sin, in which He has been there to care for me. There have been so many times that Christ has cared for me in His arms helping me to heal from the aches and pains of life that I have encountered that sought to keep me discouraged, blind, and burdened. No matter how damaged I was, Christ has always been there for me with open arms for me to come as I was.

Earlier we looked at making the decision, I want to live a life of risk for God. When you make this decision, this choice, you have done the hard part, you have resolved in yourself that you want to be courageous in this area and push forward in God given steps.

I've often struggled with what it truly means to have faith in Jesus Christ. Without the true definition, how can I be sure I've been saved? Fortunately, the Word contains a book that clearly defines the characteristics of faith: 1 John. Simply believing in Christ's life and death in the academic or historical sense is not enough. After studying 1 John for a few nights, here are some of the key points I learned.

Some Open Courseware classes are older than you might think — many courses reach back into antiquity to show how Christianity has affected society throughout time and place (and how some social and cultural aspects affected religion as well). Some courses teach the Bible as spiritual text and as literature, some courses touch on social and political histories and other courses focus on cultural aspects of religion and society. Each course listed below falls into one of those three categories.

My point is, we so easily make VWs out of mosquitoes. And we try so hard to make things black and white. At its core, Christianity is about accepting Jesus as your Savior. Everything else is secondary. And frankly, I find nearly everything else to be a little gray.

I’ve heard it said plenty of times by evangelicals that we, each of us as individual Christian people, are temples of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God literally lives in each of our bodies. As a way of encouraging us to show respect for our bodies I suppose the idea might have a positive spin off. But theologically it really misses the mark, and it prevents us from seeing something important in the New Testament.

So I'm starting to think that patriotism is overrated. I'm not actually saying it's bad. It isn't bad to like one's country and want it to succeed. But it seems like it gets put higher on the lists of some than is actually healthy. I tried today to write out a list of where my actual loyalties lie, or at least if not, where they should lie if I were practicing virtuously the Christian ethic:

First loyalty: Our Lord Jesus Christ, Lamb of God, and with him the Father and the Holy Spirit.Second loyalty: His pilgrim Church on Earth--when it functions as it ought, as the Christian church most fully revealed. (Which churches this applies to in my mind, and in what degree, depends on the degree to which they are one, holy, catholic and apostolic.)Third loyalty: Family and friends. Except in rare circumstances, this loyalty ultimately goes in that order.Fourth loyalty: Humanity in general.Fifth loyalty: United States of America.

This course was challenging for me not just at an academic level, but at the level of my heart and my own worldview. One of the things I take away from the course is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most powerful thing we have to change lives. It has the power to reach anyone, no matter what their life looks like. I also leave the course with a much needed renewal of understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture. Here we have what is needed to live life with excellence. It’s not a last resort and it does not need any supplement to give it power.

Well, Pat Robertson seems to have put his foot into his mouth again. Or has he? When Pat Robertson makes his "pronouncements" we have to remember that he is basically talking to those he considers Charismatics/Pentecostals who are used to hearing about the effect the spiritual realm has on the physical realm.

When you hear the word Repent, what thoughts come to mind? Perhaps you envision a stern preacher, standing behind a pulpit, pointing his finger at the congregation, appealing to them to beg for God’s forgiveness. Maybe the preacher had been reminding his listener’s of how unworthy and sinful they are, and how badly they need to get their lives right with God. In my own experiences, the only time the word Repent is brought up in church is during a “salvation message”, and it seems to be directed predominately towards either the unsaved or the backslidden. So in our modern day church repentance has become synonymous with asking for forgiveness. And although that is certainly part of it, as we will see, that is far from the end of the process.

I was listening to John Frame a while ago and he made a case for homeschooling that I’ve heard some variations of but not with the undergirding that makes Frame’s view understandable (maybe even plausible).

I’ve read a lot of miracle stories–Christian, Jewish, Buddhist; ancient and modern, in the Bible and outside it–and these are the sort that strike me as plausible. The “miracle-worker” who puts on a show, lifts up his hands and knocks people to the floor (then asks for a tithe); he’s nothing but a con-man. But the cancer that just isn’t there anymore, the infant who wasn’t expected to survive, the brain-dead patient who suddenly wakes up, these are the ones that ring true. Yet they are so subtle, you could never even prove a miracle happened. Was there ever cancer to begin with? Was the test wrong? Was the girl really dead at all?

Most of us, myself included, differentiate between our careers and our Christian lifestyles. Although we may be active in church, volunteer in the community, attend small groups, and generally be vocal about our faith, the workplace tends to be separated. We go to work, talk to co-workers about the weather, sports, TV shows, and perform our duties, but leave our faith in the parking lot. However, the Word teaches that all aspects of our lives are to be glorifying Him in unison. Your job is not an exception; it should be another active part in your ministry.

You might think that evangelical Christian blogs would be filled with doom and gloom. While some of those blogs do exist, most of the best blogs today — or, at least the most popular evangelical Christian blogs today — focus on teaching, humor, news from a Christian perspective and daily living. Those tops blogs are listed below in categories that range from education to ministries and from personal blogs to a couple blogs with off-beat perspectives

I am writing about this because I recently read an article that blasted Pat Roberts for comments he made regarding this tragedy.I will not start judging people as to whether they were right or wrong.However, what I will tell you is that the Haitian people need support, love, prayers, encouragement and compassion in their hour of need.God has from time to time punished cities, i.e., Sodom & Gomorrah, people and even nations, i.e., Israel.However, this is God and only He can judge and pass out judgment.

I’m not trying to backdoor an argument for churches to become right-wing Calvinists, but honestly asking the question, “how much weight do we grant experience when shifting through the confusing modern theological landscape?”

Christians must be marked with the highest form of honesty because we are submitting “for the Lord’s sake…that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.” It is not the IRS the believer should be worrying about, but rather the impact that a lack of integrity on our part could have on the cause of Christ. When we make light of the moral implications of dishonesty on our tax return, our accountant makes light of Christianity.

In December 2009, 100 Huntley Street aired a special on Stephen Ministries, a program that has been nothing short of a miracle to my family, and no doubt countless others.

I say “miracle” because at our time of greatest need–when most of our lifelong Christian “friends” and fellow church members went into hiding–our Stephen Minister stayed close by our side, encouraging us in our grief.

So what happens when a person first identifies that he or she suffers from an anxiety disorder? For all of us, thousands of thoughts are pouring through our brain at the same moment. I’m a freak! What do I do? What’s wrong with me? Is there any cure? To further worsen the situation, many of us have lives that are full of all sorts of other drama such as addiction, other mental illness like bipolar disorder, or chaotic or nonexistent interpersonal relationships! This is indeed difficult to overcome! What should a person do in order to turn a complete 180 and live a happy and healthy life rather than a sad and miserable one?

In a startling example of eisegesis Peterson states, "... we may assume that wherever resistance to the message is recorded, Luke believed the Lord had not yet acted in grace and power to enable belief" (p. 404). May we? In fact Luke explains that the Jews rejected the word of God and judged themselves unfit for eternal life (13:46). I guess this shows how we all see what we want to see in texts and may wish to ignore other ways of seeing things.

The following two claims are at issue, and Klein seems to think the second claim is supposed to undermine the first. I'm not sure how.

1. Resistance to the gospel only occurs when God hasn't led someone to believe.2. Jews rejected God and thus became unfit for eternal life.

Like all the things Jesus does, it was quality workmanship – wine of such high grade the master asked the bridegroom why he had kept the best for the feast’s end. This miracle also blended into everyday life – like miracles often do. The wine didn’t glow or in any way distinguish itself from ordinary wine – except that it was better – so that the onlookers probably later asked themselves, did I really see what I thought I saw?